Bread & Chocolate by Philippa Gregory

Bread & Chocolate by Philippa Gregory

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


This short story collection is a real showcase of Philippa Gregory's talent. I'd enjoyed her historical fiction, but this collection shows that she doesn't just excel at research and period detail, nor does she need hundreds of pages to tell a story. These short stories are mostly modern day and are in a variety of viewpoints from third person, to third person limited, to first person. I'd recommend this to anyone who likes a rich story, but who might not have hours to sit and read. I carried it around with me and read it on the Underground as I went from place to place. Many of the stories are very short, and it's amazing how much richness she can distill into such a small space. My favorite was "Coo-ee", and I wondered how much of it was a narration of her writing process, the dry historical versus the in-the-moment, looking for "a bit of a laff" components of her fiction. Perhaps it has nothing to do with her writing process, but it's entertaining all the same.


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